


Never good enough

by GothicPrep3000



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Family Drama, Multi, Other, Rebelliousness, Self-Hatred, here have some Pickles angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24114697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothicPrep3000/pseuds/GothicPrep3000
Summary: Pickles reflecting on why his family could hate him so much...or just a summary of their dysfunction idk. And how it made Pickles turn out and how he's still dealing with it now.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Never good enough

"I haven't used one of these things in fifteen years..." Pickles panted, clearly surprised by his own lack of cool in the last few minutes. Heart racing. Some part of him deep down just didn't feel safe and was fighting. Like he was being set up for failure and didn't want to fall for it and trip up and do what they expected of him. He knew he couldn't win no matter what he did. He needed to not play. Not even respond. Those people had no place in his life. 

His whole life, from the time Pickles was little, he noticed how much his Dad hated everything and anything that he might have been interested it. Colors. His crayon drawings. Anything fun or diverting. Singing. He remembered skipping along a narrow hall in his childhood home, connecting the pantry and the laundry room and going by a small study, or "Daddy's office" as Molly would refer to it, and humming a Black Sabbath tune he had heard on the radio. His father was lurking in the the study with the lights low, sipping whisky out of a glass tumbler. Pickles heard glass clatter and break into shards. "GOD DAMNIT STOP IT WITH THAT IDIOTIC HUMMING AND PRANCING ABOUT, YOU LOOK LIKE A DAMN NANCY-BOY" Calvert bellowed, grimacing frighteningly. Pickles froze, then lowered his head and walked away, trying so hard not to cry until he was safely in his room. But when he got there Seth was in there, sprawled out on one of the twin beds looking at the folded-out center of a girlie magazine. Pickles flopped down on his bed and began weeping, albeit as quietly as he could. But Seth still noticed. "Aw is baby fucking crying? Stupid weak little baby..." Seth pounced on the bed and proceeded to punch at his head and hold him down into the pillow. Pickles wondered how long he would have to hold and save his breath with Seth smothering him like this. "Fucking faggot..." Seth spat. 

Pickles had learned early that as long as he was around these people, there really was no safe place for him. Nowhere to exist as who he was anyway. When he was quiet and could come close to being nobody, nothing for them to attack, he could sometimes get by. But it was impossible to protect himself all the time. Like that day, humming quietly, he had forgotten to feel unsafe for a single second and was caught off guard by his short-fused father. Sometimes Pickles would wonder about his father...and all of them really, all three of them, he would wonder why they all seemed so impatient, so hateful, so sneering and belittling. 

Money seemed important to them. He didn't know what his father did at his job exactly, something called "middle-management," managing what he wasn't sure but it seemed excruciatingly dull. His father would come home every night as mean and as annoyed as he ever was, but would always have a certain smugness about him. "I pay the bills in this house, you will treat me with respect." "You've never had a real days work in your life, maybe you'd be better suited living on the street with those lazy bums, eating out of the garbage like a fucking animal." It always came back to money. Having it, or looking like you had it, it always seemed to come back to that. 

As a teenager, no, younger, when he was 12 or 13, he got an after school job at a drive through burger place. It lasted a week or two. He didn't mind the menial tasks, he certainly didn't mind getting to be away from his family for a couple extra hours after school. But he had this pimply faced dildo of an assistant manager catch him sneaking a sip of whisky on the job, and that was the end of that. Worse still, word got back to his fucking parents. "Just wait until your father gets home" scolded Molly, pacing around the kitchen. Pickles didn't want to show that the threat was terrifying him. Calvert got home and he got the belt that night, along with with a stern lecture. He wished he could just get the belt alone, because he couldn't stand listening to his father's unfair bullshit. "YOU. HAVE GOT. TO LEARN SOME GOD DAMN RESPONSIBILITY. I'M TIRED. OF HAVING A FUCK UP FOR A SON. YOU ARE MAKING. US LOOK LIKE TRAILER TRASH WITH YOUR BEHAVIOR." Pickles almost couldn't believe it. THIS was what he was hearing, while Seth, right after his 16th birthday, had just been court ordered to spend some time in Juvie this year for selling meth outside the school gym. 

Molly and Calvert didn't talk about that much. When forced to confront it Molly just laughed. "Oh that's our son! He can't help it, he's a born entrepreneur." Pickles hated them all. He hated their shallowness and fakeness and selfishness and rage. They made him sick. He was terrified, but as he got a little older, as he got more into music, he started to pity them. He had found something to care about besides their approval. He would study musicians and their collection of albums. He would teach himself the craft while absorbing these albums, most of which he had to borrow. He acquired a guitar, feeling luckier than he had in his entire life that the old pawn shop keeper gave him such a good discount. Why, he didn't know, the old shopkeeper only explaining vaguely. "I got a feeling about you son...oh boy here go this gonna be big..." the old man had mumbled and trailed off. Pickles wasn't sure what that meant but he took it as a compliment. 

Music had been his savior. He took a chance on it and ended up making more money than his pathetic angry father could ever dream of making. And on top of that, music had made him happier than he had ever been in his life. He got to express himself finally, being denied this simple thing his entire childhood, and so he put a lot of feeling into his songs, he had so much to get out. He also lived dangerously. He grew up associating danger with being himself and vice versa. Now that he was older, he felt mixed up but he also felt alive, finally. He found himself in wild situations and he found he was never really punished for them. Not as severely anyway. By the time he was out touring with Snakes and Barrels, he would find himself spending a night in jail every now and then. Big deal. The label would bail him out so he could make the next gig. He would show up to court and sleep through it, letting his lawyers agree for him to pay the fine, no matter how high it was. Sometimes in the early morning, anywhere between 5-10 am (any hour of the morning was early really) sometimes he would find himself stumbling back to the hotel he was supposed to be staying at, from a party he found after his show, or a devoted female fan's apartment, or maybe last night's venue's dressing room. He would catch a glimpse of his own face on the tabloid newspapers the street vendors were selling. "Pickles the Drummer punches NFL owner at cocktail party" the headlines read. "Pickles the Drummer arrested for public intoxication on the white house lawn 4th of july celebration." He only remembered these events in the paper about half the time. 

He kept living dangerously. He sneered and relished it every time someone in authority reprimanded him for bad behavior. "what are you my fucking Dad?" he thought to himself in court as the judge went over his list of crimes, dressing him down. 

It didn't matter, they couldn't get him now. 

And yet...

here he was hiding in the bathroom of a restaurant, clutching his inhaler, trying to get a grip. Terrified. Feeling trapped.


End file.
